page_title: Selim III
section_title: Plans of reforms
hierarchical_section_title: Selim III / Reign / Plans of reforms
caption_attribution_description: Sultan Selim III holding an audience in front of the Gate of Felicity. Courtiers are assembled in a strict protocol. Oil on canvas. Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, Istanbul (Inv. 17/163)
context_page_description: Selim III was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807. Although regarded as an enlightened ruler, the Janissaries eventually deposed and imprisoned him, and placed his cousin Mustafa on the throne as Mustafa IV. Selim was subsequently killed by a group of assassins.
  Selim III was the son of Sultan Mustafa III and his wife Mihrişah Sultan. His mother Mihrişah Sultan originated in Georgia, and when she became the Valide Sultan, she participated in reforming the government schools and establishing political corporations. His father Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III was very well educated and believed in the necessity of reforms. Mustafa III attempted to create a powerful army during the peacetime with professional, well-educated soldiers. This was primarily motivated by his fear of a Russian invasion. During the Russo-Turkish War, he fell ill and died of a heart attack in 1774. Sultan Mustafa was aware of the fact that a military reform was necessary. He declared new military regulations and opened maritime and artillery academies.
  Sultan Mustafa was very influenced by mysticism.
context_section_description: The talents and energy with which Selim III was endowed had endeared him to the people, and great hopes were founded on his accession. He had associated much with foreigners, and was thoroughly persuaded of the necessity of reforming his state.
  However, Austria and Russia gave him no time for anything but defense, and it was not until the Peace of Iaşi (1792) that a breathing space was allowed him in Europe, while Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria soon called for the empire's strongest efforts.
  Ottoman provinces from Egypt to Syria began to implement French policies and began to differ away from Istanbul after Napoleon attack.
  Selim III profited by the respite to abolish the military tenure of fiefs; he introduced salutary reforms into the administration, especially in the fiscal department, sought by well-considered plans to extend the spread of education, and engaged foreign officers as instructors, by whom a small corps of new troops called nizam-i-jedid were collected and drilled in 1797. This unit was composed of Turkish peasant youths from Anatolia and supplied with modern weaponry.
  These troops were able to hold their own against rebellious Janissaries in the Balkan provinces such as the Sanjak of Smederevo against its appointed Vizier Hadži Mustafa Pasha, where disaffected governors made no scruple of attempting to make use of them against the reforming sultan.
  Emboldened by this success, Selim III issued an order that in future picked men should be taken annually from the Janissaries to serve in the nizam-i-jedid. Selim III was unable to integrate the nizam-i jedid with the rest of the army which overall limited its role in the defense of the state.
caption: Selim III receiving dignitaries at an audience at the Gate of Felicity, Topkapı Palace. Painting by Konstantin Kapıdağlı.
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